The nationwide consumer reporting agency, Experian has not taken the sufficient steps needed to intake, process, investigate, and notify consumers about consumer disputes, resulting in incorrect information on credit reports according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the independent agency protecting customers from financial institutions.
Experian, based in Costa Mesa, California is a subsidiary of Experian plc, global data broker and analytics company headquartered in Ireland and maintains information on families across America. It markets, advertises, sells, offers, and provides credit scores, credit reports, credit monitoring, and other related products to consumers and third parties. However, according to the CFPB, it has been providing inaccurate or false information on consumer reports, threatening their access to credit, employment and housing.
“When consumers disputed errors on their credit reports, Experian conducted sham investigations rather than properly reviewing the disputes as required by federal law,” said CFPB director Rohit Chopra. “Credit reporting errors can have serious consequences for a family’s finances, and it is critical that credit reporting giants follow the law.”
According to CFPB, Experian is conducting sham investigating that fail to properly address consumer disputes, as well as improperly reinserting inaccurate information on consumer reports.
Violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act
The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) requires that consumer reporting agencies take steps to ensure consumer reports are accurate and to conduct investigations of information disputed by consumers. The FCRA provides people with multiple ways to dispute inaccurate information on their consumer reports. One way is by contacting consumer reporting agencies directly.
The FCRA also requires that consumer reporting agencies follow certain procedures before reinserting into consumer reports information that has previously been removed as the result of a dispute. The CFPB alleges that Experian has violated the FCRA’s requirements for handling consumer disputes in numerous ways.
Conducting sham investigations
According to CFPB, when handling disputes, Experian uses faulty intake procedures and does not accurately convey all relevant information about disputes to the original furnisher. Experian routinely and uncritically accepts the original furnisher’s response to the disputed information, even when that response was improbable or illogical on its face, or when Experian has other information available that suggests the furnisher is unreliable.
At the conclusion of the investigation, Experian sends consumers notices that fail to inform them of the investigation results, and instead provides information that is confusing, ambiguous, incorrect, or internally inconsistent.
Improperly reinserting inaccurate information on consumer reports
Additionally, the CFPB has said Experian has failed to implement basic matching tools that prevent or greatly reduce the likelihood of reinsertion by a new furnisher of a previously deleted tradeline. Instead, Experian improperly reinserts inaccurate information into consumer reports because it fails to match newly reported information with records of previously deleted information.
Consumers who have disputed the accuracy of an account and thought that their consumer report had been corrected, instead see the same inaccurate information reappear on their consumer report without explanation under the name of a new furnisher.
Further offences
In addition to alleging violations of the FCRA’s requirements, the CFPB alleges that Experian’s faulty dispute intake procedures and failure to provide furnishers with consumer-submitted documentation, uncritical deference to furnishers’ responses to disputed information, and failure to prevent improper tradeline reinsertions also violate the Consumer Financial Protection Act’s prohibition on unfair acts or practices.
